The Biannual International Margaret Cavendish Society Conference

The International Margaret Cavendish Society is excited to announce that Danielle Dutton will be giving a reading from her novel Margaret the First before giving a Q & A at our upcoming conference.

Consequently, we are extending the deadline for abstracts for the next biannual conference, which will take place on June 22nd-24th, 2017 at Bates College, Maine.

The Society is also pleased to announce that the keynote will be given by Professor Carolyn Merchant, author of the seminal book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. Her paper is titled "Margaret Cavendish: Natural Philosopher and Feminist." Preference will be given to abstracts that closely relate to the conference theme, but all talks about Cavendish, her family, and related subjects will be considered. The conference theme is "Margaret Cavendish: Reception and Representations." Cavendish has increasingly garnered intense academic interest during the past twenty five years by scholars from a wide range of disciplines such as literature, history of science, philosophy, history and politics. She is also increasingly becoming a figure of interest in popular culture, as attested to by Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World and Danielle Dutton's Margaret the First: A Novel. Regardless of the interest that she sparks and publications devoted to her, old caricatures and stereotypes of Cavendish still stubbornly remain within both popular culture and academia alike. Indeed, she still provokes aversion in many disciplines. It is our intent that this interdisciplinary conference will explore and investigate reactions to Cavendish by her own contemporaries as well as by writers from the late seventeenth century up to the twenty first century. We aim to gain insight into how and why Cavendish has been loved, hated and/or ignored as tastes and socio-cultural norms evolved. On a broader level, the conference will consider who or what hinders writers and/or certain ideas from being canonical or acceptable. We will post advice on transportation and accommodation for the conference. We expect there will be both inexpensive dormitory housing and reasonably priced motels.